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Saturday, February 20, 2010

Sure, you've seen photos from display gardens, plant combinations, new must-have items for your garden. But there are two things I recently acquired at the Seattle show I haven't shown you. First up: look who got an autographed photo? Ooh la laaaa.It's Ciscoe Morris, the most upbeat gardener I think I've ever experienced. His catch phrase is "ooh la la" and of course, he signed that on the photo.

And then there's my new bumper sticker, expressing a mantra I wish more Portlanders were aware of.

Every time I see a horribly pruned tree I cringe. And they're notorious here in North Portland. Someone with a chain saw thinks they're an expert and BAM, off go the tops of trees. It's the worst kind of pruning you can do, and pruning that weakens the tree, producing more quick-growth branches that are likely to break off and do damage to houses and property. Most importantly, it can weaken the root system. Stop. Topping. Trees.

The sun is out, and I have some pruning to do. Wisteria, elderberry, and time to finish up the rose pruning. But don't worry: there's no topping of trees going on here. Ooh la la!

I was not aware of Ciscoe but how can you look at that photo and not smile?

We haven't topped any trees here but we honestly don't know what we're doing in the pruning department. I finally got up the nerve to prune my blueberry bushes and my husband just took on our Japanese maple which was no small thing.

Give that tree-topping memo to PGE. The worst butchered trees I seem to see are hacked around power lines. I understand the need, but is that really the best method? They came down my alley last year and shaved off all (yes, ALL) the branches on the alley- (and power-line-) facing side of my freakishly tall cherry trees. Now they are both freakishly tall and freakishly half-bald. Poor things.

I can't agree with you more on the tree topping! Argh! It's infuriating. And, yes, the power company is one of the worst offenders.

I'll add to that the complete disregard most people have for trees as living beings. It is so wrong to cut down a mature, beautiful, living tree because of the inconvenience of having to pick up leaves. Times like that tempt me to go all Ent on the culprits...

How ironic. I spent a large chunk of this last weekend taking an obscene amount of wood off our flowering cherry tree. It's a shadow of its former self.

In my own defense, it had gotten pretty severely overgrown, and at its advanced age it has quite a bit of rot in almost every major branch. So, I expect this surgery will either cure it, or kill it. It has a massive root system, so I'm hoping it has enough vigor to overcome the shock to its system.